The invention relates to a box for transporting and selling eggs in fixed amounts, said box comprising a bottom part and a cover part and being provided with standing elements adjoining the bottom part of the box for separately supporting each egg, said boxes being interengageable and nestable in a direction perpendicular to their bottoms in the empty and tilted-up state.
Boxes of this kind are known, It is common practice to make the known boxes from pulp or foam material. Usually the standing elements are formed by parts of the inner surface of the box together with the outer surfaces of more or less pyramidal elements formed integrally therewith. These pyramidal elements usually extend not only from the bottom but also from the cover surface. With this conventional shape the cover part exhibits, viewed from the outside, a number of recesses corresponding to the pyramidal elements extending down from the cover part.
The known box of the kind briefly described above has some limitations.
In the first place, due to the presence of recesses in the cover, the possibility of applying a test to said cover is limited.
Moreover, the possibilities of high-grade printing are strictly limited by the conventional material used.
A third limitation of the known boxes resides in that the surfaces and particularly the side surfaces in the longitudinal direction of the box are not appropriate for applying texts, advertising terms and the like.
In order to eliminate the aforesaid disadvantages it has been proposed to provide the conventional egg box of said type after being filled with eggs with a printed sleeve carrying the desired texts, photographs, advertisements and the like. Such a sleeve has to be arranged around the box in a separate operation, which is time-consuming. Moreover, the sleeve brings about additional costs.
The invention has for its object to obviate the said disadvantages and provides to this end a box of the type described in the preamble, in which the standing walls of the bottom part and those of the cover part are at least substantially flat and are tapering from their basic surfaces downwards and upwards respectively.
This results in a substantially rectangular top surface and substantially flat standing walls of the bottom part and the cover part. Particularly when the material is appropriately chosen, for example, printable cardboard, external printing of excellent quality can be obtained, for example, in three or four colours.
Particular advantages are involved in the embodiment of the egg box according to the invention in which the standing supporting elements are formed on at least one separate insert element placed in the bottom part. This insert may be made of foam or pulp material. This embodiment has the advantage that the box is eminently suitable for planar structures so that printing can be carried out in advance on the flat form. This printing may comprise a code known per se, which can be automatically read and contains data about the kind of article, price and so on. The known box does not permit such encoding.